Roundup: California Bills Will Increase Resources for Youth in and Graduating From Foster Care

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a package of legislationfocused on expanding and promoting adoption opportunities and
increasing services for children in California’s foster care system, reports California Newswire.

The bills signed into law will create a food stamp program to assist
youth transitioning out of the foster care system and help provide
housing for former foster youth working toward a higher education
degree. The legislation also ensures that California’s foster care
system will continue to have the resources necessary to provide the
valuable services these children depend on and helps older foster
children secure a safe and stable living environment.

Schwarzenegger also signed a number of other bills addressing foster care, adoption, and child welfare, including bills that:

create
a 12-month transitional food stamp demonstration project that grants
federally funded food stamps to foster youth for one year after their
eighteenth birthday, when they age-out of the foster care system and no
longer qualify for state aid.

require
the University of California, the California State University and
California Community Colleges to give priority for on-campus housing to
emancipated foster youth.

extend
the Older Youth Adoption pilot project for six months until June 30,
2010 to provide participating pilot counties with sufficient time to
demonstrate the effectiveness of pre-adoption and post-adoption
services for older youth who have been in the system over 18 months and
are living in group homes or non-related foster families.

establish
the development of a plan for the ongoing oversight and coordination of
health care services for foster youth and the development of a
personalized transition plan for a foster youth in the 90-day period
before he or she ages out of foster care.

specify
that any savings in state funds attained from an increase in federal
funding for adoption services be reinvested in the foster care and
adoption service system. The bill also requires adoption agencies to
inform prospective adoptive parents of their potential eligibility for
federal and state adoption tax credits.

tighten requirements
for approving criminal background checks for foster care family homes
licensing in an effort to prohibit persons convicted of specific
offenses from becoming foster or adoptive parents.

broaden
the use of the federal adoption incentive awards that are received by
the state as a result of increased adoptions of older children to
include other legal permanency options available to older foster youth
in order to increase the opportunities for these youth to be placed in
stable homes.

Laws passed recently in two states, Arizona and Oklahoma, have many things in common, says Serena at Feminists for Choice. Both restrict access to abortion care and both contain legislation previously put forth and vetoed or defeated but now repackaged. And…

Arizona and Oklahoma are not unique. This could happen in your state.
That’s why it’s absolutely critical that pro-choice advocates stay on
top of what’s happening in their legislatures, because abortion bills
don’t always make it onto the ballot. Feminists For Choice will keep
you up to date about the proposed legislation in Colorado, Montana, and
Florida, and we’ll do our best to keep you in the loop about the
challenges to the Arizona and Oklahoma statutes. But we need your help!
If you have information about ways our readers can get involved to
challenge these assaults on choice, leave us a comment or send us an
e-mail so that we can help get the word out.